


This Wasted Ring

by paladinquen (postmodern_robot)



Series: Mr 7th Floor Verse [3]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/M, Moving On, No one is IN a relationship in this fic, Past Relationship(s), it's about musing post-relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 00:07:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12782589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postmodern_robot/pseuds/paladinquen
Summary: Six years is a long time, long enough for people to change. (A POV from Daan [Mr 7th Floor himself!], set in the Mr 7th Floor 'verse)





	This Wasted Ring

**Author's Note:**

> For the longest time I’ve avoided giving Daan a POV, because it’s been more entertaining to try to tell the story through Matthew’s eyes, but this little one-shot has been begging to be written - so much so that I haven’t been able to sleep for the last three hours.
> 
> This will likely be the only Daan POV I write for a while, at least until I make more progress in the 7th Floor fic itself. It takes place near the end of that time skip in Mr 7th Floor where Matthew doesn’t see Daan for two years. 
> 
> This fic is NOT NedCan, that pairing isn’t even mentioned.

Tiny lights winked at him, sparkling off the precisely cut diamond. Daan moves the ring slowly, held between thumb and forefinger, to catch the city’s lights. He’s left the lights off in his hotel room, but Tokyo’s lights are so bright he doesn’t need them on with the curtains open. They catch the diamond well enough, making the little ring the brightest thing in the room.

A ring that will never be worn.

For lack of anything else to do, he tries wearing it, though it’ll only slide down the first half inch of his littlest finger - Sakura did have small, slim and delicate hands. When he had decided to buy it, he felt a strange sense of satisfaction that on such small hands, a smaller diamond would still look large enough to impress thanks to the proportions.

Daan leans back in the chair and tries to process how he feels - six years, a relationship at a distance - he wasn’t willing to quit his job to move to Asia full time but HondaCorp was a family company, and she wasn’t leaving Japan. He remembers the thrill of the beginning - twenty-four years old and thanks to his old friendship with Kiku, he’s won the project that will put him on the map but it’s not enough yet, it wouldn’t be, until he made Partner, or so he had thought at the time. Falling for Sakura wasn’t part of the plan, it wasn’t part of her plan either, they had known each other in passing because he had been closer to her brother all these years but now something has simply clicked.

It’s against the rules to be involved with a client, and Sakura Honda is definitely a client, as any Honda would have been - but why was it that being romantically attached to a client was frowned upon, while having a close friendship with a client (such as his relationship with Kiku) was considered fine? Daan invested a fucking lot of time into his friendships, hell he lives with his best friend (when he is in Canada anyway). Like many other rules at the time, he convinced himself it was a stupid rule because it was convenient for him to do so.

Six years is a long time. Six years with constant travel added on and Daan sprinting to the next big win, then the next big promotion, rinse and repeat, it had felt much longer. The forbidden nature of their early relationship and the excitement that it had brought, had changed from energizing to exhausting. At twenty-four you could agree to things like taking your time, even though you couldn’t wait to see each other again, to hold their hand in yours, to brush back their hair from their face, to discover a world through someone else’s eyes just once or twice a year - the preciousness of their time together made their love seem even more intense, their fights forgivable. At twenty-four they had compromised - let her earn authority in her family’s company, let him make Partner and finally feel a sense of financial security for once in his life. Let him make sure that his friends and family were alright, let him build the teams that would ensure his eventual transfer over to Asia.

Six years is a long time to wait for someone to grow up. Not Sakura, him. She was ready for this ring three years ago, he knew but pretended he didn’t because he wasn’t ready. Daan has always been afflicted with wanderlust, and it wasn’t as romantic as the books had made it sound. It felt like a curse sometimes, because he would have everything life could give him handed to him, but he would still look out the windows, over the horizon, wondering what there was to be found, what there was to experience, what opportunities or new business was just waiting to be uncovered, what hidden parts of himself he would discover on the journey. Belle understood, Mathias too, but Christian, lucky little wise Christian, seemed to understand from a very young age that happiness came from celebrating what you already had around you. Daan was never very good at being satisfied with what he had, maybe it was because he had started off with so much less.

And now he’s holding a diamond ring that no one would ever wear and doesn’t feel anything. He’s just numb. It’s the first major purchase he’s ever made in his life that he hadn’t been confident about, a desperate purchase - that alone should have warned him. If any of his siblings or friends had come to him with this story - “I’m buying them a ring so they won’t leave me yet”, he’d have let them know exactly how wrong and stupid they were being. In fact he has gone through that lecture before, to Mathias, right before Lukas ended things. Of course he had given himself other excuses in his head, but this was the truth. Yet, here he is, holding this wasted ring, made with his own birthstone which he knows is hideously over-valued in the market.

That’s what bothers him the most on the surface, the waste. The stupidity isn’t too far behind, and since it’s his own stupidity, he can’t deflect this onto anyone else.

He puts the ring back into its little blue box and sets it aside so he doesn’t have to see it. It doesn’t help him any with the memories and reflection. Daan is sitting in a hotel room alone in the dark, with only city lights and the milling strangers below for company. This scene has been half his life every year for the past four years in at least four different cities. Travel, once his balm, has become humdrum like everything else. Most his projects eventually took him back to Indonesia, where he had a ready-built network from childhood friends, but Indonesia had been another compromise because it was hard to keep a secret relationship secret in Tokyo - he was still flying the longer way from Canada anyway. Sakura had eventually worked her way to leading the international departments, including Southeast Asia - HondaCorp’s second largest market - but that was another compromise she made for him. Given a choice, Sakura preferred to be closer to the seat of power in Tokyo, helping Kiku with the things he wasn’t particularly great at and vice versa - the arrangement they had since she had come into the world. Then Kiku had figured out exactly how close Daan and Sakura were.

It’s not his proudest moment, keeping something as important as “I think I’m in love with your sister” from one of his longest and closest friends, but when the love affair first began, they had both thought that there would be a better time to tell Kiku. There never had been a good time, and that was how Daan relearned that you should just tell the truth sooner rather than later, it was always better than the alternative.

But “I think I’m in love” wasn’t good enough for a ring. It wasn’t enough to convince him to make the move to Japan (and it would have been up to him, between the two of them he was more flexible, there was no family business to run). Daan isn’t surprised she turned the ring down, not really, but he had felt a frightening and lonely void at the thought of not having her somewhere in his life. The selfish truth is, there’s comfort knowing that you have someone, even if you don’t really advertise the fact, you know that they’re there. It’s as if there’s one aspect of your life that’s mostly figured out, and it serves as a balm when other things are rough. That balm was what Daan was trying to hold on to, the return for avoiding temptations while he was in this relationship, that he figured he could live with marriage. Sakura was brilliant, ambitious, patient and giving, maybe too giving - he could do worse. If he wanted to request a transfer to Indonesia, there was a 90 percent probability he would get it, leave Arthur with the department in Canada, that was partially what he had hired the man for.

Now Daan finds he’s homesick, and he has no idea how to process this feeling. For the longest time, he was homesick for Indonesia. Then he was homesick for anywhere but Canada, with all its drama and problems - with Belle and Christian telling him to leave them alone to live their own lives, with Mathias pining over Lukas…but these were old problems. Everyone’s grown up, the scars are mostly scabbed over and in the case of his siblings, they’ve been getting along for a while now. Even Mathias has recovered and remembered how to live his life, he’s going to be the next best thing in trendy food culture. Right now, Canada is better than the immediate fact that Daan has burned two bridges at once - with a longtime friend, and a woman he had loved - because he just didn’t know what he wanted, but didn’t want certain aspects of his world to change. Right now, Daan is the one who, compared to everyone else, needs to grow up. Hilarious, he had sprinted to seniority faster than anyone, and now he’s playing catch-up.

Maybe for a change, the greenest grass, the next adventure, the new sense of self, could only be found at home. Hadn’t he chosen to make Canada his base for a reason? Wasn’t it time to spend some time there and really reconnect? At the very least, he wants to cuddle with his rabbits again, instead of having to see videos and pictures of them halfway across the world.

Home. Right. Daan takes a deep breath and feels relieved actually. He’s been feeling relieved, this is the first he’s allowed himself to admit it.

Daan stands with purpose and flips the lights on, it’s time to pack. Halfway through his phone rings - it’s Mathias, so he answers and turns on the speakerphone.

“Hey man.” Mathias greets drowsily, it’s morning over there, which means he’s put two and two together and is worried about Daan.

“Hey.”

There’s a pause. “So I’m guessing since I haven’t heard any news or gotten messages overnight, and how…monotone your voice is, that she said ‘no’.”

Daan doesn’t answer at first, he just rearranges his latest haul of hotel toiletries to make space in his bag for his suit. “It was a long time coming I think, if I hadn’t taken over the conversation, she would have probably broken up with me before I got to the point of embarrassing myself.”

He can hear Mathias’ sigh on the other end of the phone. “So what’s the plan?”

Daan smiles, grateful that Mathias asked him an action-based question, and didn’t express platititudes like ‘I’m sorry’ or anything similar.

“Sleep.” Daan responds. “Then board the plane, by the way, it looks like I forgot my keys, the room’s basically packed and I haven’t seen them. I’ll need you to let me in.”

“No problem.” Mathias yawns. “Just call and I’ll leave the cafe for a bit.”

“Thanks.”

More packing.

“So…” Mathias starts again. “What are you going to do with the ring?”

Daan chuckles with no humor. “Hawk it to a buyer, I’ll get more out of it than if I try to return it, there’s no such thing as a full refund on an engagement ring, they’re like cars, they lose value the moment they leave the store, even if it’s never been worn.”

He can basically see an image of Mathias shaking his head in front of him. “Damn that’s cold.”

“No, it’s making sure it doesn’t go to waste.” Daan grits back. “Sakura and I are over. Unequivocally over and no Mathias, I’m not going to fight for it and neither is she, I’ve wasted enough of her time, taken advantage of it, she deserves better. A buyer will pay me for the value of the diamond, that diamond will likely be separated from the band and both will be reused and resold somewhere else, and some other couple will enjoy it. I’d rather someone else can get value out of this, it beats leaving it in a sock drawer somewhere for eternity until I accidentally throw it out one day.” It’s not a low blow, but Daan is curious, he can’t help but ask, “That ring you bought isn’t actually in your sock drawer is it?

There’s a bit of a pause, but to Mathias’ credit, he doesn’t respond with hurt or anger like his younger self would. He’s gotten a lot better. “It’s in the closet. Man…you’re actually relieved aren’t you? The more you talk the…lighter you sound.”

Daan straightens and rubs his tired eyes. “I was selfish. I held onto someone because they were convenient, not because I actually wanted to work at being with them. This is…expected I guess. I was dreading this moment forever, the ending moment, and now that it’s happened I’m free in a way.”

There’s a shocked silence on the other end before some chuckles. “We are so different, you and I. Do you…do you still love her at all?”

Daan lies back half on the bed as he ponders the question. “I’ll always be fond of her, and wish her well, there is a kind of love in that.” He admits to the quiet of the room. “And I know that I was, once, in love with her. At the end of the day, she did nothing wrong, except indulge me too much for too long.” He didn’t mention the petty point that she didn’t inspire his poetry anymore. She hadn’t for a while. It wasn’t worth mentioning.

Mathias makes a sound as if he expected that answer.

“And,” Daan adds, “My current plan is just to go home, and stay home for a little while. I’ve been looking for excuses to travel as much as I have Mat, and I think even I’m done with it. I’m fucking exhausted, my body has no idea what country it’s waking up in anymore. Once I thought that was cool. Now I just feel like an old man. No more travelling unless it’s for emergencies, I miss Nijntje, Hitam and Maple.”

Mathias must be more awake now because boisterous laughter erupts on the line. “So you don’t miss your family or your friends? Just your little monsters!”

Daan smiles fondly. “Just my little monsters, that’s right.”

“Yeah Daan, come home, live in your own apartment instead of a hotel room. I know you like swiping free shit and charging it to your company, but you did buy this apartment for more than just taking me in as a pity case. Time will pass and you my friend, you’ll move on, you’ll find what you’re looking for. Whatever, wherever, whoever that is, or all of that, who knows?”

Daan smiles at that. “Who knows.”


End file.
